Legitimacy Through Reform? Authoritarian Regimes Under Pressure and their Policy Responses

Institutional reforms as a means to restore or increase regime legitimization are not a phenomenon only observable in democracies. Authoritarian regimes often aim to instrumentalize institutional reforms to increase their legitimacy. Authoritarian learning is understood as a process of adaption to challenges through policy responses such as reforms, by an incumbent authoritarian regime, on the grounds of observation of events in other regimes facing a similar situation of contestation and upheaval. Such adaptive learning processes are very similar to those traditionally theorized on the side of social movements or potential challengers to authoritarian rule (Givan et al 2010; Hagopian & Mainewaring 2005; Brinks & Coppedge 2006; Huntington 1991). On the incumbent side such processes can have an impact upon the policy responses of the regime at stake and influence their stability. Political and institutional reforms are amongst the most common policy responses of authoritarian regimes faced with a situation of fundamental political contestation. Can such reforms re-legitimize authoritarian regimes that have come under pressure? In this paper I want to elaborate on this question turning tot the example of Morocco during the Arab Uprisings in 2011. Authoritarian learning improves the response of the incumbent regime to challengers on the bases of strategic assessment and increased information and thus makes such regimes more resilient. Thus it describes a process that influences how political and institutional reforms are carved out and what they aim at. If authoritarian regimes are under pressure through social mobilization the aim of institutional reforms is to restore their grip on power oftentimes through political reform to increase the legitimacy of the regime in charge.